Sunday, August 10, 2008

Antiques Roadshow #2, yard sale, and birthday party

Oh, people. It has been a crazy few days.

Friday and Saturday we had a yard sale. I spent most of the day Friday tending it with my mom and my SIL.

Friday evening, S and I went to a surprise birthday party. I made the REALLY BAD mistake of not eating before we went. I had two gin martinis and was down for the count. It caused us to leave late on Saturday morning for...

The Antiques Roadshow in Grand Rapids, MI. This was my second time to have items appraised. The first time was last summer. My best friend K and I went to Louisville, KY, for a girl's weekend and had a blast. This year, S and I went and it took ALL DAY. (Needless to say, my SIL - who was tending the yard sale - was quite pissed because we were gone all day. I asked her why she didn't just shut down instead of keeping it open and getting pissed.) I took my dad's violin. Which he doesn't know how to play - none of us do. Found out that it would cost more to fix it up than to buy a new one. Not wholly unexpected, but a bit disappointing. I also took a small hand-made wooden box I got at the thrift store. It smells very much like smoke inside. The running joke was that it was an urn and the smell was left-over charred person. Luckily, I found out it's a humidor. So no more worries that it's dust of someone's favorite great aunt causing my little box to always carry a smoke smell.

This little box? That is a humidor? Which holds tobacco one smokes? Which implies that they INHALED THE SMOKE INTO THEIR LUNGS? Has a LEAD LINING. Yeah. Lead.

It's heavy as hell, this little box.

It was hand-made in the 30s or 40s and I find it utterly charming.

But I can't help but wonder what kind of health problems the person who used this humidor had.

You are Elinor Dashwood of Sense & Sensibility! You are practical, circumspect, and discreet. Though you are tremendously sensible and allow your head to rule, you have a deep, emotional side that few people often see.